Our brilliant financial leader Barack Hussein Obama sure knows what he's doing, judging by this article. Thanks for the enormous spending, Mr. President--it's paying off in spades! http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=ahfK709b4uds
Green Energy! We're going to stimulate the economy by being less efficient and spend more on energy costs! freedom from oil!
I'm just curious did you criticize Bush's spending record? I certainly am angry about Obama's I'm also consistent and am upset about the Trillions we will have spent on Iraq and Afghanistan when all is said and done all the while we never got the guy we were supposedly after. Don't forget creating the Department of Homeland security the biggest government creation since the end of World War II. Thank god Bush didn't increase spending or the size of government oh wait...
One body with little oversight (did you see all the stuff about missing laptops and $35,000 dinners?) they are free from FOIA requests. Even the CIA has to respond to FOIA requests and will redact sensitive security matters. Why is this uber agency free from that? Any time you put a few agencies under one umbrella you are going to get a colossal fuck up. Homeland Security is a monstrosity of government waste and does not really achieve the supposed goal of a safer country, rather its more bureaucracy and more waste. We already have a vast defense and intelligence apparatus with 16 intelligence agencies before Homeland Security was created. Under Bush we also increased the number of private contracts from the government to a degree that we are now contracting about 50% of government work out to private agencies. This would be fine if the agencies were purely private but as they are on the government dole it will lead to more waste not less. The only thing worse then government is private - public partnerships where you are guaranteed to get worse service because there is incentive to cut corners and pad bills (See Bechtel in Iraq). We also passed Tarp I on Bush's watch which up to that point was I think the biggest bill ever (Way to go Obama you beat Bush on waste you're #1!).
We already had plenty of means to do this pre-9/11 we've merely EXPANDED the bureaucracy. 9/11 didn't happen because there wasn't enough government. Look at Katrina and tell me DHS does a better job. What a joke!
We spent $600B on Iraq so far, not $trillions. And yeah, I was outraged at the spending of the Republicans and Bush. But they spent pennies compared to what Democrats are spending these days.
Well just as Bush set a new tone (PS 600 Billion is an EXTREME low ball figure I've seen up to 2 trillion with veteran's benefits etc.) so goes Obama. Hopefully, the next president REGARDLESS of political affiliation won't follow the lead of the three greatest spending presidents of all time Reagan, Bush and Obama.
Had Obama not stepped to protect the UAW, take control of GM to perpetuate the UAW retirement plan... there could have been added to the rolls of unemployed tens of thousands more.
$10B in bailout money / 10,000 employed workers = $1,000,000 for each worker. It'd be cheaper to give them all $100K.
The $600B is publicly available - you can add up the sum of the supplemental spending bills. The cost per vet for the VA is $2500/year. The entire military is on the order of 1.5M men and women. There are 26M or so vets paid for by the VA, a fraction served in Iraq. (maybe a million individuals served)
Yes, interesting how both Bush and Obama used the bailouts to help the big banking institutions and manage political crises. Why DIDN'T Obama and Bush just send the bailouts to every American citizen instead of the banks? If we aren't going free market (Banks given handouts, GM being nationalized etc. done under BOTH parties) lets at least shower the plebs with gold coins.
Or wipe out consumer debt with that money. It puts money in banks, which they can loan, and it leaves people in a better situation financially, and thus more willing to buy.
Yes, I was upset about Bush's growth of the federal government, and I said so more than once. But do you realize that we are now spending every 2 months what we have already spent on the entire Iraq War??? Let me repeat that: Every 2 months, under Obama's enormous "stimulus" package, we are spending an amount equal to the entire cost of the Iraq War. Just think about that for a minute.
Uh, huh. And if Obama nationalizes health care, it will put thousands of Americans out of work who are presently employed by private health insurance companies. Will you be upset by that?
I've been saying this for a long time. The downside is the banks' revenue goes south as there's lesser interest payments they can collect. On the other hand, why shouldn't the suffering be spread around?
